German children were given two names. Boys commonly were baptized
with the first name Johannes (or Johann, often abbreviated Joh).
German girls were baptized Maria, Anna or Anna Maria. This tradition
started in the Middle Ages.

So a family could have five boys with the
first name Johann. You can see the potential for confusion
until you understand that the first name doesn't mean a thing.

The
second name, known as the Rufname, along with the surname
is what would be used in marriage, tax, land and death records.

So in a family with boys Johann Friedrich, Johann Peter, Johann
Daniel, etc., the children would be called by (and recorded in
documents as as) Friedrich, Peter and Daniel. Usually, the name
Johannes in these records marked a "true John" who would continue to
be so identified.

By the 19th century, more Germans gave their children three names.
Again, typically only one of the middle names was used throughout
the person's life. Roman Catholics often used saints' names, while
most Protestant groups also included names from the Old Testament or
even nonChristian mythology.

A second naming tradition involves nicknames, often called Kurzformen.
In English, most nicknames are created by dropping the end of the
given name (Christoper becomes Chris). But Germans often shorten a
name by dropping the first part. Examples include:

Nicklaus >> Klaus

Sebastian >> Bastian

Christophel >> Stophel

Christina >> Stin or Stina

Katharina >> Trin

Note that these familiar forms are used in church or other records,
even though by today's standards we might expect formal names to be
used.

In German-speaking areas, children were almost always named for one
or more of their baptismal sponsors. The most common pattern would
be for sons to be named in this order:

first born, for father's father

second born, mother's father

third born, father of the child

fourth born and on, uncles of the child

The same pattern applies to daughters but using the mothers' names
(father's mother, mother's mother, etc.). Families would reuse given
names for children who died young. There are even documented
instances of families using the same name for two children who both
survived.

Scroll down to the bottom of each of the pages linked above to see a
list of records included in the free search, as well as when the site's free access period expires. Registration is required to view search
results (I was prompted to register right after I ran a search).

I was doing a casual online search in the Northern
Kentucky Newspaper Index when the name "Kolbeck, Theresa
Seeger" jumped out and smacked me in the face. It was among a list
of deaths announced in the Feb. 23, 1937, Kentucky Post.

Could Theresa Seeger Kolbeck be Heinrich Arnold's sister, who married
a possible cousin and settled in the United States near her brother? Here's
what I've discovered so far in researching this question:

1.Mary Theresa (Seeger) Kolbeck

2.Maria Teresia Seger

Born

Feb. 18, 1849, Germany

Feb. 15, 1849, Steinfeld, Germany

Married

Herman Henry Kolbeck (probably before date of immigration)

unknown

Immigrated

1873 (probably May 16)

unknown

Died

Feb. 22, 1937

unknown

The death certificate for Theresa No. 1, which asks for parents'
names, should've helped clear it up. But the informant, Mrs. Ben
Schlarman (Theresa's daughter Mary, born about 1884), didn't know
their names:

The Last-Name ProblemBut then something made me question whether Seeger is even Theresa's
correct maiden name:

This passage is from a profile of George Heuer, husband of Theresa's
daughter Elizabeth, in the biographical section of History
of Kentucky, vol. 3 (available on
Google Books). It says that Theresa's maiden and married names
were both Kolbeck. The writer takes care to point out that
Elizabeth's parents weren't related before marriage.

But Mrs. Virginia Eilers, the Heuers' daughter born in 1908 (and not mentioned in the above bio), believed that Seeger
was the right maiden name. That's the name she supplied on the 1946
death certificate of her mother and the 1947 death certificate of
her aunt, the aforementioned Mrs. Ben Schlarman:

What to Believe?
So which should I believe? The death certificates of Theresa's
daughters, for whom the informant was a granddaughter (who also might've provided the information for the death announcement indexed in the
database where I first found Theresa No. 1)?

A death record is a
primary source—created at the time of the event by a person who
witnessed it—but it's usually a secondary source for the deceased's
parents' names. The informant wouldn't have firsthand knowledge of
those names (unless a parent was the informant, such as on a child's
death certificate).

Or should I go with thebiography in History of Kentucky,
by William Elsey Connelley and E. M. Coulter, Ph.D., edited by Judge
Charles Kerr, published in 1922 by the American Historical Society?
This is a secondary source, compiled well after the reported events
by those without firsthand knowledge.

Biographical collections are known for their potential for inaccuracy: Families
might exaggerate their relatives' accomplishments or provide
mistaken information, which could become further distorted in
editing. (Maybe Theresa read the published bio and said, "No, no, no! I said my mother's last name was the same as my husband's.")

My AnswerI won't believe any of these records for now, and I'll keep looking for the parents of
Theresa No. 1 and the spouse and later life events of Teresa No. 2.

I should get the full death announcement from the Kentucky
Post, and rent the microfilm of Steinfeld's church records to
look for a marriage for Teresa No. 2. The Northern
Kentucky Genealogy Index lists the baptisms of several
children of Theresa and Herman Kolbeck, so I can go to the library
to view the church records on microfilm.

This post is brought to us by guest blogger and our "Who Do You Think You Are?" special correspondent, Sunny Jane Morton:

Josh Groban didn’t
sing his way through last night’s episode of "Who
Do You Think You Are?" But the multiplatinum singer still
commanded center stage as he pursued the story of a distant
grandfather, eight generations back.

The story starts with a widow and her children arriving in
Pennsylvania in the late 1600s, according to the Passenger and
Immigration Lists Index. This resource, searchable
on Ancestry.com and in print at many large libraries, is
helpful for tracing early immigrants. The index transcribes
information from a variety of resources, such as emigration lists
and genealogical journals.

Groban followed the trail of the missing husband, his
eighth-great-grandfather, back to Germany. Here he discovered that
Johann Zimmermann was an educated Lutheran church deacon, astronomer
and singing instructor. It was easy to see how pleased Josh was to
hold a music textbook from which Johann would have taught.

Then Johann’s story turned sad. He observed Halley’s
Comet in the night sky, which he thought forecast doom for a
corrupt Lutheran church. He published this opinion under a
pseudonym, but was found out and got in big trouble with the church
court. He pleaded to keep his job, mentioning his "heavily pregnant"
wife in a letter to the duke. With each German document or book he
viewed, Groban also received a neatly typed English translation.

In the episode, Groban took a whirlwind tour of German church and
university archives, where he paged through 17th-century books and
held documents written by his ancestor. He stood in the courtyard of
Johann’s university dormitory. He climbed to the belfry where Johann
may have stood to examine the night sky.

It was clear Groban wasn’t sure what to make of his ancestor’s
radical opinions. Many genealogists can relate to having ancestors
whose value systems differ markedly from our own. He didn’t try too
hard to judge the distant past by today’s standards. Instead, he
looked at other indicators of the man’s character, like his
willingness to sacrifice for his beliefs and his desire to take good
care of his family.

If you're tracing German ancestors (and you aren’t a celebrity guest
on "WDYTYA?"), check our popular Family
Tree German Genealogy Guide by James M. Beidler. It has
advice on discovering where in Germany your immigrant ancestor came
from, as well as on researching in the records of Germany. Our
German
Genealogy Cheat Sheet is a handy quick reference, with a
German alphabet guide to help you read old records, a word list and
more.

This Sunday's episode of "Who
Do You Think You Are?" features singer
Josh Groban and his genealogy search on his mother's side of
the family. That journey takes him to Germany and his
eighth-great-grandfather, a deacon and accomplished author on
astronomy, mathematics and science.

Here's a short peek at the episode:

Now I'm getting jealous—my dream trip is a visit to the little towns
in Germany where my ancestors came from. The episode airs this
Sunday, March 15, at 10/9 Central on TLC.

I found the German baptismal records
for brothers Joan Caspar Ladenkotter and Johannes Franz Caspar
Ladenkotter, but
they gave no clues as to which brother is my
fourth-great-grandfather, or any indication that the older Caspar
died as an infant (my sneaking suspicion).

On the other hand, my search for Seeger relatives went swimmingly.
Scrolling through unindexed church records on microfilm, I found the marriage
record for my third-great-grandfather Johann Henrich Seger and his
wife Maria Catharina Kolbeck, which also gives their parents'
names:

In baptismal registers, I also found the names of three siblings to my great-great-grandfather
Heinrich Arnold Seeger. Only one, sister Maria Theresia, appears to have lived
beyond childhood. These registers were full of death dates, like so:

In the Ladenkotters' hometown, either everyone was exceedingly
healthy or noting deaths in baptismal records wasn't the practice.

Sprinkled throughout the records were surnames that matched my
ancestors', so I need to spend more time with the film to figure out
how and whether I'm related to all those folks.

I also noticed that the Seeger surname was consistently spelled
Seger in these German records. That could explain why Heinrich
spelled his name that way when he applied for a passport to return
to Germany in 1907, after having used Seeger in his other US records.

To find your German ancestors' church records, you need to know
where in Germany they're from. In our March 19 webinar, Trace
Your German Immigrant Ancestors, German research expert Michael D. Lacopo
will tell you about records that can reveal a German place of origin
(including lesser-known published resources), as well as the best
new German genealogy resources and websites.

Here, I'll
share a few tips that might make it easier for you to find maps of
your ancestral places:

Try to find out as much as you can about your ancestral hometown.
The names of the country, state, district, other geographical
divisions, and/or nearby towns are clues to help you find the right
place on a map. And a
county, district, or other towns might share the name of your ancestral town. Other Steinfelds in Germany are in the districts of Main-Spessart, Bavaria; Stendal,
Saxony-Anhalt; Schleswig-Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein; and others. I want Steinfeld, Vechta, Lower Saxony (aka
Niedersachsen). It's near the city of Oldenburg, and
today it's often written as Steinfeld (Oldenburg).

Search for maps using the search box at top right. The
site search box located below that looks at web pages and blog articles, not
the maps collection.

Search not only for your ancestral town, but also for nearby towns
and other geographical divisions. Not every place named on a map is
part of the site's search: Searching for Steinfeld gets no
results. But searching for Vechta found this highly detailed
map (with
a legend here) that includes large-farm names, churches,
windmills, meadows and more:

Look for atlases. My Oldenburg search also brought
up a
page from an 1859 atlas with a description of the Grand Duchy
of Oldenburg, which encompassed Steinfeld. It includes principle
occupations (agriculture, chiefly wheat, beans and hay),
religions (mostly Lutheran, with significant Catholic populations), and more.

1. Which Caspar is it?
One of my fourth-great-grandfathers was Casparus Ladenkoetter
(or Ladenkotter, the spelling in most American records),
according to the birth record of his son Franciscus Josephus (he
went by Joseph), born July 1, 1814.

FamilySearch.org's online
index to German baptismal and marriage records includes
Rheine, Germany, where they were from, and one afternoon I
mapped out a working tree on my kids' coloring paper with as many
Ladenkoetters as I could find in FamilySearch.org records. The
circled area is Joseph's branch:

Here's a close-up:

My problem is the German tendency to name siblings similarly. According to the records, Joan Caspar
Ladenkotter was born March 27, 1780, and his brother, Johannes
Franz Caspar Ladenkoetter, born March 7, 1781.

I don't know which one is the right guy to be Joseph's father (searching FamilySearch doesn't turn up a death record for either one). Maybe Caspar's microfilmed marriage record
gives his full name or birthdate, or maybe Joseph's or a sibling's baptismal
record gives the father's full name.

2. If I get that done ...
My second-great-grandfather Heinrich Arnold Seeger was born in
Steinfeld, Germany, Feb. 26, 1852. The FHL has microfilmed
church records from there, and I want to find Heinrich's
baptismal record, his parents' marriage record, and any siblings.

I have these jobs and the relevant microfilm numbers in my research log in Google Drive, which
I can access on my phone, and I'll print out the info just in
case. My research time will be tight, so I want to make sure I can
hit the ground running.

The FHL has extended
hours during the conference:

Tuesday through Friday, Feb. 10-14: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Saturday, Feb: 15: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

RootsTech/FGS exhibit hall hours are

Thursday, February 12, 2015, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Friday, February 13, 2015, 10:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.

Saturday, February 14, 2015, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

If you're going to RootsTech/FGS, stop by Family Tree Magazine's booth No. 1238 in the exhibit hall (feel free to ask if I found my Caspar).

Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com
just added 31 new databases for researching German ancestors. The
11.7 million records cover civil registrations (government birth,
marriage and death records) for various places in Germany, dating
between 1874 and 1950. There's no single link to search just these
31 collections, so you could do a few things:

Searching
one database at a time is your best bet if you know it covers the area in Germany where your family lived. Go
to the card
catalog and use the filters on the left: Under Filter
by Collection, narrow the database list to Birth, Marriage and
Death Records; and under Filter by Location; narrow by
Europe, then by Germany.

Then at the top of the list, use the Sort By
dropdown menu to choose Date Added, and the new German databases
rise to the top of the list. Click a title to search that
collection.

You also can view a list of all German birth, marriage and
death records by going to the Search
All Records page and scrolling down to Explore by
Location. Click the Europe tab, then click Germany. Under
Germany Birth, Marriage & Death, you'll see a few databses
listed; if you click the "View other" link at the end of that
short list, you'll see all the German birth, marriage and death
records. This list is arranged by record count, though, and you
can't sort it in other ways.

If you want to search all the German civil registration
records at once, run a global search for your German ancestor
from the Ancestry.com Search
All Records page. (At the bottom of the search form, make
sure the box for Historical Records is checked.)

Then narrow
your results on the left: In the Collection dropdown menu,
choose Germany and click the green Update button. Next, under
the All Categories heading, choose Birth, Marriage & Death.
If you still have too many results, look at the top of your results
list, click the Categories tab and choose the database titles
that most relate to your search.

My third-great-grandfather Joseph Ladenkötter
was born in 1814 in Rheine, Steinfurt, Germany. Rheine is not among the areas covered with this records addition, but I thought I might find a relative who was born, married or died elsewhere.

I searched on the
surname Ladenk*tter (with the asterisk wildcard to pick up
both Ladenkotter and Ladenkoetter), and found a 1911 marriage
record for Auguste Gertrud Ladenkötter
(it looks like her birth surname was different, so she may
have been a widow) and Wilhelm
August Friedrich. The records are
in German, of course.

The Ladenkötter
surname is pretty unusual, so I suspect that Auguste Gertrud was
married to one of my relatives before she married Wilhelm. (I see the record mentions Rheine.) My
next step is figuring out what the record says, which should
help me find out if my hunch is correct.

Do you fit into that group? I certainly do. My Germans arrived in
the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area mostly in the early to
mid-1800s. They were near the beginning of the era that saw the
largest influx of German immigrants, between 1820 and World War I,
when nearly 6 million of their countrymen immigrated to the United
States.

The first significant groups of Germans arrived much earlier, in the
1670s, and they settled primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. A
wave of political refugees called the “Forty-Eighters”
arrived after 1848 revolutions in the German states.

Immigrants before 1850 were mostly farmers. After 1840, many headed
for cities and established "Germania," or German-speaking districts.

This
1872 map, part of the Perry-Castañeda Library Map
Collection, shows America’s German population from the 1870
census. Note the dark shading over the northeast and southwest
corners of Ohio, along Lake Michigan, and in New Jersey. By 1900,
the populations of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Hoboken were
more than 40 percent German.

Are you interested in tracing your German ancestors, finding their
old records in the US and Germany, and discovering where they fit
into this history? Our German
Genealogy Premium Collection has the guides you’ll need:

Our popular Family Tree German Genealogy Guide—signed by
author James M. Beidler

A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your German Ancestors
e-book, a classic by S. Chris Anderson and Ernest Thode

Our Unpuzzling
Ancestral Names Value Pack made me curious about my family
surnames and whether things I heard growing up about
where a name is from or what it means are true. Here's how I checked
out a few of the names I'm researching:

Haddad: My maiden name, inherited from my
great-grandparents who immigrated in 1900, is the Lebanese
equivalent to Smith. I Googled surname Haddad and one of
the results was this
Wikipedia page.

Seeger: I looked up this name, which comes from my
German ancestor H.A. Seeger, in the last name search on
Ancestry.com, which uses surname meanings and origins from
the Oxford Dictionary of American Family Names (a
reference you also might be able to find in a library). It also
maps where in the United States most people with that name
lived. The name is German and Dutch, "from the Germanic personal
name Sigiheri."

Norris:
This name, which belonged to my Irish third-great-grandfather
Edward Norris, is a place-based name for someone from the North
or who lived on the north side of a settlement. It also could be
a French occupational name for a nurse. According to the Irish
Times' mid-1800s surname distribution search, most
Norrises lived in County Waterford, with next-door Tipperary and
Kilkenny as runners-up. Family lore says Edward came from County
Cork, which also is on the list and borders Waterford.

Frost: This surname, from my English
third-great-grandfather, gives me fits in online searches.
Besides all the weather reports, it's a pretty common name. It
helps to add place names, genealogy and -weather
or -winter to my searches. The name could be English,
German, Danish or Swedish, and it's based on a nickname for
someone "of an icy and unbending disposition or who had white
hair."

Reuter: Google wants to show me Reuters news reports
if I forget quotation marks (as in "Reuter") when searching for
this name online. It's a German name, possibly for "someone who
lived in a clearing or an occupational name for a clearer of
woodland."

Ladenkotter/Ladenkoetter: Does anyone have ideas about
this German name? It's not in
the Oxford Dictionary of American Family Names or on
surname sites, and web searches turn up mostly my own posts. I
even tried typing the name into Google translate to
see if it means anything in German (it doesn't). On the plus
side, it's unusual, and just about any Ladenkoetter records
I find are for a relative. Update: If you have German roots, the comments about this name's origins (including one from A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Germanic Ancestors coauthor Ernest Thode) are insightful. Thank you to Mr. Thode, K. Hewett and Fawn!

The Unpuzzling
Ancestral Names Value Pack has resources for searching names,
understanding naming patterns, figuring out how surnames changed
over time, and discovering surname origins and meanings. Learn more
about it in ShopFamilyTree.com.

Podcast listeners also can tour of the Digital
Public Library of America (DPLA) website with DPLA executive
director Dan Cohen, and get tips on unpuzzling US county boundary
changes with Family Tree Magazine contributing editor David
A. Fryxell.

Lisa also chats with Family Tree Magazine publisher Allison
Dolan and myself about solving genealogy research problems.

In no particular order, here are 11 things I'm looking
forward to about this weekend:

Watching 16 genealogy video classes on the laptop when it's convenient,
which for me means during naptime (my kids', not mine) or after
bedtime. Or downloading classes to watch later.
They cover ethnic research, records (including land, tax and
occupational records), strategies, online genealogy and more.

Sneaking downstairs to go to live
chats with genealogy experts. Six are scheduled on topics
from translation tools to forensic genealogy, and I'll be able
to download transcripts for any I miss.

The Find Your German Town of Origin class with James
M. Beidler: I've found
hometowns for some of my German ancestors, but a bunch
more still have "Germany" or "Prussia" as a birthplace. I'm
hoping to learn new strategies from the author of The
Family Tree German Genealogy Guide.

The conference Message Boards, where people share
surnames, ancestor stories, research questions, favorite
websites and resources, family recipes and embarassing library
stories.

The Female Ancestors and the Law chat with Judy G.
Russell of the
Legal Genealogist blog: Half of me wants to learn about
the legal hooey my female ancestors put up with, and the other
half doesn't want to know. But I'll go with the first
half, because those laws determined what kinds of records were
created about women.

Rick Crume's No Index? No Problem: Tricks for Browsing
FamilySearch.org Records class: I'm eager to get my paws
on the records FamilySearch puts online even before you can
search them by name. Browsing these unindexed records is
time-consuming (I'm looking at you, Ohio,
Hamilton County Records, 1791-1994), so I need these tricks.

The Mobile Genealogy Apps and Hacks chat with Kerry
Scott: Kerry is a riot (check out her Clue Wagon blog), so this
will be informative and fun.

The Pain-Free Family History Writing Projects
class with Family Tree Magazine contributing editor
Sunny Jane Morton: Gathering my family history research into a
book is a long-term goal, and I'd love to learn about
small steps that can get me on the path.

The Brick Wall Busters: Solve Your Stumpers chat with
Family Tree Magazine contributing editor Lisa A. Alzo:
It's a chance to ask questions and get input from Lisa and others in the group. There are always pretty smart cookies at the Virtual Conference, and someone might have dealt with a similar problem to yours.

Not packing a bag, getting on a plane, having sore feet at the
end of the day, or missing my family.

Finding a birth place for your ancestors from Europe is the
genealogical Holy Grail, because it opens up the possibility of
finding overseas records, particularly church records.

For German ancestors, our German
Genealogy Crash Course webinar next Thursday, Jan. 16, has
information about resources that can help you trace your roots back
to Germany. It also gives attendees a chance to ask questions of
presenter James M. Beidler.

In case any of you are ready to throw in the towel on finding your ancestor's place of birth, I wanted to share the places I
found birthplace information (unexpectedly, in a couple of
cases):

My fourth-great-grandfather Edward Thoss was a founding member
of the Covington (Ky.) German Pioneer Society, which I was
surprised to discover on
the Kenton County Public Library website through a Google search. The overview
there gives his birthplace as
Langenweisendorf, Schleiz. The library has a 25th anniversary
book, published in 1902, which lists "Langenweizendorf
Fürstentum Schleiz."
I believe this should be Langenwetzendorf.

My third-great-grandfather Joseph Ladenkotter immigrated in
1836 from Rheine, in the district of Steinfurt. I discovered this from the Passenger and Immigration
Lists Index, 1500s-1900s (it's in print at many
libraries, or search
it on Ancestry.com), which in turn led me to a list of
emigrants called Auswanderungen aus dem Kreis Steinfurt
(Emigration From the County Steinfurt) by Freidrich Ernst
Hunsche. I searched WorldCat
and found this publication at the Allen County
Public Library, so I ordered copies
through the Genealogy Center 's Quick Search service.

My great-great-grandfather H.A. Seeger was born in Steinfeld, as noted in his 1907 passport application, which I
found on
Ancestry.com. I had no idea he ever traveled overseas, so
this was a thrilling find.

For a couple of other families, I've had luck by finding people I'm
related to and contacting them about their research. Here's a map of
birthplaces I've found so far. That cluster in northwest Germany is my Cincinnati ancestors; Edward Thoss is the one in the bottom right corner.

Besides the German Genealogy Crash Course webinar, we also have a
couple of seats left in Family Tree University's German
Genealogy 101 online course. It's starting this week, though,
so you should register ASAP.

As you might guess, I enjoy asking people I've just met where their
ancestors are from. Here in Cincinnati, the answer often involves
Germany, so then I ask about their surnames to see if we have anyone in
common. (Then I wrap it up before people start thinking I'm
weird.)

Every once in awhile, someone will answer my ancestor inquiry with, "Oh, I'm a mutt" and rattle
off a bunch of ancestral homelands.

It
collects genealogy research guides to 13 countries or regions of
Europe, plus European Jewish ancestors. You'll learn

what records are available and where they're kept

which records you can get from here in the US using the web, microfilm, books and other sources

how to get records from overseas

how to deal with language barriers and boundary changes

what websites, books, organizations and archives can help in
your research

It's a good way to get expert instructions for researching ancestors
across Europe in one economical package. The
Family Tree Guidebook to Europe is available now in
ShopFamilyTree.com (where you'll see the list of countries covered).

It's a question that burns inside my brain this time every year:
Why is Oktoberfest celebrated in September?

Here in "Zinzinnati,"
where German roots run deep, we've already had our Oktoberfest. Our
neighbors across the river in Kentucky have one this weekend. In
Munich, Germany, home of the first and largest Oktoberfest, the two-week
party wraps up the first weekend in October.

After the summer's grain was harvested, brewers needed to empty
those casks to make room for the October start of the brewing season. People were happy to
help.

In 1810, by the date the royal wedding made Oktoberfest
official, there wasn't much beer left. Horse racing was the main
event there, and Prince Ludwig repeated the races every year on his
anniversary. Over the years, the festival was extended and combined
with finishing off the March beers, evolving into today's
party attended by millions around the world.

From the beginning of last night's "Who Do You Think You Are?," Chelsea
Handler knew her mother's father had been a German soldier in
WWII. She just wanted to know the extent of his involvement. Her
Jewish heritage through her father's family heightened her
curiosity.

The
Leistungsbuch ("performance book") mentioned in yesterday's
post and seen here:

wasn't a military service record after all. Rather, it was a record
of the grandfather's scores in the Nazi party's Sports Badge Program, part of the
mandatory labor service program and a way to provide military-style
training without violating the Treaty of
Versailles.

A few things I liked about this episode:

It shows the importance of learning the historical context in
which your ancestors lived. Knowing about post-WWI life in Germany helped Handler understand why many Germans supported
Adolf Hitler when he first came to power. Finding out about her
grandfather's experience in the Camp Algona (Iowa) POW
camp revealed his likely motivation for later moving his family
to America.

It showed a side of WWII history—the lives of ordinary Germans
during that era—that I didn't know much about.

The WWII historian who met Handler on the beach, and who was there serving in the Army the day her grandfather was captured. I bet he could tell some stories!

But if your German ancestors, like mine, immigrated to America in the 1800s, church records will be your main source of information in Germany. Chances are you can find German church records yourself. I know this because the October/November 2013 Family Tree Magazine will have Rick Crume's step-by-step guide to German church records. I'll let you know when it's available.

FamilySearch has added 23.9 million indexed records and images to the free FamilySearch.org, with new browsable image collections from Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, England, Italy, Mexico and the United States. Notable collection updates include the 19.2 million document images from the new collection United Kingdom, WWI Service Records 1914-1920; 2 million index records from the collection US WWI Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918; and almost the 931,000 index records from the collection US New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1925-1942. Search or browse these databases from the chart here.

You're looking for genealogy records of your ancestors in Germany,
and perhaps you've even found some. They might look like this:

And it makes you understand why everyone talks about how hard it is to
understand German records: Not only are you dealing with an
unfamiliar language, but the script makes the words difficult to
interpret.

Most German Catholic church records are in Latin; Evangelical
(Lutheran) records may be in Latin or German. Records as late as the 1930s are usually
written in the old German Gothic script.

But there are tricks you can use to figure out what these church
records say about your German ancestors.

Our March 14 webinar,
Interpreting German Records, will teach you how to work with German
genealogy records, from basic translation to decoding hard-to-read
handwriting and typeface. German genealogy expert James M. Beidler will
show you

tricks for reading German script and type

resources for building your vocabulary of German terms and
deciphering abbreviations

a methodology for solving the quirks of the printed
Gothic/Fraktur typeface

strategies for transcribing and translating the handwritten
German cursive script

The Interpreting German Records webinar takes place Thursday, March 14, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time
(that's 6 p.m. Central, 5 p.m. Mountain and 4 p.m. Pacific). You'll
save $10 on your registration if you sign up before March 7!

Bonne année, Gutes Neues Jahr, Xin nian yu kuai, Feliz Año
Nuevo and Kali hronia … Whether you say it in French, German, Mandarin, Spanish or Greek, they all translate to "Happy New Year!" Hope yours is off to a great start!

Speaking of languages, genealogists understand and appreciate the value of names and all the family history information that they can provide. Naming patterns and traditions; spellings; pronunciations; and meanings can impact your search for ancestors from a given locale.

To provide added insight to your ancestral search, we've created 15 PDF downloadable reference guides featuring first names from around the world. Each comprehensive guide is presented in dictionary-style format, making it easy to search for names, spellings and their meanings. For example, A Genealogist's Guide to British Names reveals that the name Harry means "ruler of an estate." Rather prophetic for Prince Harry!

Get more information from your genealogical research this year with a better understanding of your ancestral names!

Celebrate your ancestors who served in the military or lived through
historical conflicts by exploring and documenting their lives. With theMilitary Research Value Pack, you'll get easy-to-use tools that will guide you through:

What records to look for—military or otherwise—and how to locate them

How to find and mine online records

Research tips and guidance for tracing ancestors' involvement in specific US wars and conflicts

You'll find that many types of military documents—from service to pension to land records—can reveal important information about your family tree, including soldiers' widows and children. Even ancestors who didn't serve might have left behind draft records.

German heritage has been the #1 most claimed ancestry in the US, so we here at Family Tree University have done our best to accommodate our Deutsch friends. In this guest post, Presenter Jim Beidler breaks down his session on German place names at Fall 2012 Virtual Genealogy Conference:

Probably the No. 1 goal of most genealogists is tracking one or more immigrant ancestors all the way to an Old World hometown, and the many folks of German descent are no different. Unfortunately, problems of history, phonetics and duplicated names often get in the way of that quest.

“Mastering German Place Names” is designed to combat these problems. I am a seasoned researcher that has been sleuthing for the Heimats of his almost entirely German-speaking ancestry for more than a quarter century, and will present my top tips in this Virtual Conference course.

People claiming German ancestry still outnumber any other heritage
group in the United States—which is why we're offering a new German
Genealogy Value Pack that'll help you trace your German roots
in the United States and in your ancestral homeland.
This Value Pack is full of practical advice for overcoming the
challenges of tracing your German ancestors.

Find Your German Roots
Independent Study Course download, with four lessons to
help you
use genealogical records and more to determine who your German
ancestors were and from where in Germany they came.

A
Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Germanic Ancestors
e-book download by Chris Anderson and Ernest Thode, with expert
instruction on researching German ancestors.

Tracing German Ancestry in
Eastern Europe download, with guidance on tracing the
German ancestors from Slovakia, Romania, Russia and other places
beyond Deutschland's borders.

Genealogy Cheat Sheet
download, a quick reference designed to deliver the information
you need to understand the records of your German ancestors

But something was wrong: The application had been "closed" because it was discovered that Lowe's ancestor John Christopher East had been mixed up with a similarly named soldier.

Previews hinted at a twist in this episode. It came when a historian showed Lowe his ancestor on a list of prisoners who'd been part of Rohl's Regiment. A sparkle in the historian's eye hinted that he knew something, but only when he showed Lowe George Washington's personal papers did Lowe realize Rohl was a commander of German Hessian troops.

East (listed under his German name, Oeste Cristophe) was among the troops Gen. Washington defeated in the Battle of Trenton, when his soldiers crossed the Delaware River to surprise the Hessians at Christmas.

I remember learning in grade school about these 30,000 men the British hired to fight the Americans, and we kids thought that was pretty bad.

But Lowe's research revealed Cristophe as a sympathetic figure: Among the youngest of eight children, he wouldn't have inherited land or even had the means to marry in Germany. He took a risk in leaving for America at age 22—then staying (as about 15 percent of the Hessians did) after his release from prison.

This story has a happy ending. Taylor's researchers found Christophe on a list of Americans who paid a tax levied to raise money for the war. Lowe is descended from a Patriot after all and he was invited to apply for the Sons of the American Revolution lineage society.

Did you know October is German American Heritage Month, Italian American Heritage Month and Polish American Heritage Month?
That’s right. The month is almost over (that was fast!), but we can’t let it go by without sharing resources to help you trace these heritages. Here are some of our favorite online articles, sites and resources:

German
People with German heritage make up the largest ancestry group in the United States, according to the 2000 US census. I'm part of this statistic, at one-half German.

The new Black Sea German Research site is for those tracing families who migrated from Germany, Alsace, Poland or Hungary to the Black Sea region of South Russia (now Ukraine) in the early 1800s. Search a database of names, upload your GEDCOM and share historical information at this free, volunteer-run site.

NBC is re-running “Who Do You Think You Are?” season 2 episodes Saturday nights this summer. Check your local listings if you missed an episode or want to watch your favorite again.

While working on an article on ethnic heritage and genealogical societies (look for it in the forthcoming November 2011 Family Tree Magazine) I was inspired to figure out what, exactly, Leo is, heritage-wise.

And by “exactly,” I mean “theoretically,” because:

you never know what proportion of genes you ended up with from each ancestor after the DNA-combining process

geopolitical developments and population shifts can mean ancestors' ethnicity is different from the country whence they came (Your ancestor from Russia would actually be German, for example, if he was one of the many “Volga Germans” who settled in Russia’s Volga River valley.)

nonpaternity events, such as adoption and children fathered—unbeknownst to you—by someone other than the person named in records

a lack of documentation or incorrect documentation about an ancestor's origins

all those ancestors yet to be discovered (unless you’ve found ‘em all)

With that caveat, figuring out Leo’s theoretical heritage combo involves first determining Mom’s and Dad’s percentages. Three of my husband's grandparents came from Germany and one from Hungary, so we'll estimate him at 75 percent German and 25 percent Hungarian. I'll go back to my great-grandparents’ origins: I’m half German, a quarter Lebanese (the source for my last name), and one-eighth each English and Irish.

I just divided each of our percentages, added up the common German heritage, and came up with these numbers for Leo (I generated the pie chart online using Kids Zone):

He’s pretty typical as far as American ancestry: In the 2000 census, German was the heritage most often claimed by Americans and by his fellow Cincinnatians. He also shares in the second- and fourth-most-commonly reported ancestries: Irish and English, respectively.

Spoiler Alert: If you don't already know what happened during Tim McGraw's episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” you are about to find out.

Country singer Tim McGraw, after looking at his birth certificate as a teenager, discovered the man he thought was his father was not his biological father. His birth certificate named baseball star Tug McGraw as his father, who he then forged a relationship with as an adult. Tug passed on without revealing much about the McGraw family tree, so Tim explored the paternal line of his ancestry on "Who Do You Think You Are?"

After gathering a few clues from his uncle, McGraw travels to Kansas City, Mo., to find out more about his great-grandparents Andrew and Ellie Mae McGraw. He views Ellie's death certificate and discovered she was a member of the Chrisman family, who settled that area of Missouri.

This led him to Virginia, researching sixth-great-grandfather Isaac Chrisman. Using surveying records and historical maps, McGraw discovers Chrisman lived on the boarder of Indian territory in colonial Virginia. Through a report made by a militiaman, McGraw discovers Chrisman was attacked by Indians and died.

Issac Chrisman's grandfather is Jost Hite, a German immigrant. He traveled to the colonies as an indentured servant with the Pressler family — ancestors of Elvis Presley. Hite quickly worked his way out of servitude and was awarded a massive land grant in Virginia. McGraw views Hite's deeds, and heads to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley to see his land.

The Hite trail then leads McGraw to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. There an archivist shows him George Washington's teenage journal, which indicates Washington lodged at the Hite family home. McGraw also reads a letter written by Washington to his ne'er-do-well neighbor, in which he praises the Hites as a prime example of how one should live his life.

While McGraw had professional researchers to help him navigate land plats and Virginia records, our Family Tree University Land Records 101 course and our Virginia research guides to help you find your ancestors on your own.

"WDYTYA" airs Fridays at 8pm EST on NBC. Check the Genealogy Insider
blog for a brief recap of each episode, and post a comment to be entered
to win in our Discover Who You Are sweepstakes!

The oldest and biggest Oktoberfest, of course, starts in late September in Munich, Germany—which is celebrating its 200th Oktoberfest this year.

Oct. 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen held a grand horse race in Munich to celebrate their wedding five days earlier. The successful event was held again the next year and the next, and Germans—who continue to claim the largest ancestor group in US censuses—brought the celebration to the United States.